Models:

Physical failure

1 out of 5,
reviewed on Oct 15, 2015

The USB port INSIDE this machine actually broke off stranding my data, Had to go to the trouble and expense of breaking out the HD and buying a new HD enclosure, will avoid samsung anything again on principle
Having said that of course I did buy a USB DVD from samsung which was ok, no issues, though I don't use it all that much, and there was nothing spectacular about it

Piece of Proverbial

1 out of 5,
reviewed on Jul 09, 2013

I have this for a year now and just about could be useful as an anchor. As someone said, it shuts down all the time and has to be manually awoken, which is ridiculous. So much for using it as a media disk which was my intention. Data transfer is slow, and it often doesn't get recognised by Win7 for reasons I can't fathom. XP is better however, but most of our PCs are now 7. I am now going to try and use it for full system backups, but I am not confident.

Do not buy this drive

1 out of 5,
reviewed on Apr 05, 2013

Bought this drive years ago and it has hacked me off ever since. The drive doesn't wake up when I power on the comp. The only way to get it to turn on is to remove either power or USB cables and reconnect them. This sounds easy, but when you have to do it every single time you turn on the computer, for years, it gets old.

Also, the drive goes to sleep so fast. Great for the environment but if you're playing an album of music (legally acquired of course) the drive will spin down between tracks and leave a 10 second gap before it plays the next one while it spins up.

Throughput to the drive is reasonable but USB2 vs USB3 makes no difference.

I have several hard disks, internal and external. Along with a few SSDs and this is my most hated piece of hardware. if I had the time I'd battle it out with Samsung tech support for a replacement with hopefully a more modern, working model. Alas, they are only really good at reading a script and that script doesn't include anything of use to me.

+
High capacity for 100 bucks

-
It doesn't work as expected. annoying problems have compounded over years to drive me crazy.

Not built to last

2 out of 5,
reviewed on Jun 22, 2012

Received hard drive for my birthday, failed after 6 months and 5 uses. Made several calls to samsung, to be given a phone number in Singapore.Will resorting to taking it to a local repair shop as I don't want to lose the data I have already put on the drive. Buy from a local dealer, if it fail its up to them to get it repaired.

Questions & Answers

After downloading my computer software into your G3 Station which took 7 hours, the backup list frustratingly shows "Empty".
So what do I do? Perhaps start another backup and waste another 7 hours and what if it shows "empty" again!

That's annoying. I would start by checking the drive on another computer that's using the same operating system. If it still shows as empty then I'd format it using the native file system of your OS and try again. These drives are junk though, I hate mine. If it continues to misbehave, I'd count my losses and get something else.